CPR: The Once Great Canadian Railway

            The Canadian Pacific Railway is Canada’s largest railway system. It travels from Montreal to Vancouver and also reaches cities in the United States like Chicago, Minneapolis and New York City. Sir John A. Macdonald originally envisioned the CPR, wanting to accomplish the promise of a transcontinental railway that linked Canada together. Canada had been and was again facing forces that were testing its unity and survival. Canada ran the risk of not developing into the Canada that we know today.

            Just as the Civil War in the United States had galvanized the British North American colonies together to form early Canada, the spread of the U.S. westward, the huge influx of American minors into the British colony of British Columbia, plus the sale of Alaska by Russia continued the fear of absorbed into the United States.

            Thus Macdonald knew that the system had to be built soon. Although Macdonald had the rest of the government on his side concerning the project, these men did not want to build it themselves. So Macdonald set out on recruiting more people to help with the project. The Government eventually found a few private investors, George Stephen of the Bank of Montreal, Donald Smith of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and James J. Hill, an expatriate Canadian investing in U.S. Railways. The latter 19th century was spent quickly building the railway, after Macdonald had found people to contribute help to all the planning and financial business.

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Building the entire CPR from the mid-1870’s and mid-1880’s was no easy task. More than 35 000 workers were involved- 15 000 working north of Lake Superior, 10 000 working inland from the British Columbia coast, and another 10 000 working on the prairies in the daunting task of building the entire west end of the railway by hand (The east end had already been built up to Bonfield, Ontario. The west end that they were working on was an expansion of the already built railway). The workers were paid once a month by a “pay car” that brought money to the area where the workers were. When the ‘pay car’ left Winnipeg each month for the Lake Superior section, it carried $1,100,000, which worked out to an average of $73.33 for each of the 15,000 workers.